


Retreat

by MotherInLore



Category: Hana Yori Dango | Boys Over Flowers (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Domestic Violence, F/M, Starting Over, Ten Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 18:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12687696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherInLore/pseuds/MotherInLore
Summary: Sometimes the definition of victory changes with time.





	1. New York

The Executive Suite at the Mariott was not a prison. Tsukishi could leave any time she wanted to. She could go down to the spa and have her nails done. She could eat in the restaurant. She could order up a car and go downtown and spend what would have been a year's income for her family in her teen years in an afternoon. She could do that. It was fine. She knew if she did, someone - the concierge, or maybe a bellhop, or maybe several different someones – would send a message to a certain number, and then her husband would give her a ring on her cell “to check up on her.” If he was in a good mood today, he'd call once every couple of hours and be delighted when she got home, ask her to model all her new clothes and jewelry for him, revel in the knowledge of how much he was able to give the light of his life, so she outshone all those stupid bitches who'd make her life such a hell back in High school. (And never mind what he'd done back then – he was making it up to her now, wasn't he?) If he was in a bad mood, the calls would be every five or ten minutes. Who was she with? Don't have lunch with her: she's a bitch and a backstabber. Don't have lunch with her. She's a slut and a gold digger. (Tsukishi had given up on having male friends of her own years ago.) None of it was worth the trouble, and she didn't have the energy today. Better to just hang out here, order room service, maybe try and see if her English was up to the Times yet.

She decided it wasn't, today. She understood all the words, but none of the sentences stayed in her head long enough to make a paragraph. She picked out USA Today instead, flipped to the Entertainment section, and read gossip about weird American soap opera stars she'd never heard of, and even weirder advice columns: _Wife Objects to Husband's Baldness_ was the headline on one of them. Tsukishi curled up in the corner of one of the sofas and settled in.

\----

Ten minutes later, she was up, pacing around the edges of the suite and shaking. In and out of the bathroom, looking at herself sideways in the mirrors. Out along the balcony and back in. Around the little conference room, the second bedroom they were using to hold their clothes. Into their bedroom, where her phone lay silent, and out again. Back to the sofa and the coffee table, and the open newspaper, and a few inches of print. Someone called Ask Amy was offering Warning Signs of an Abuser. Americans were hypersensitive about this kind of thing, Tsukishi reminded herself. Undisciplined. They thought all kinds of ordinary things were abuse. And maybe she was just a little hypersensitive herself right now, because… well, because.

 _Starts pushing for a commitment very early in a relationship. They might say things like, “No one else has ever made me feel like you do.”_ It had been what – three days? Less than that? Between the first time she stood up to Tsukasa in the hallway and the time he had her kidnapped? And then offered to pay her to hang out with him at his house all the time? _That was different_ , she reassured herself.

 _Insults or belittles you, especially in front of other people._ Well, yes, but he expected her to fight back! He _liked_ it when she fought back! Just as long as she didn't try it in front of his important business contacts, it was a game! She was smarter than he was, and tougher. She was the Weed, and she could take anything he could dish out.

 _Blames others for their feelings and actions: “I wouldn't have done it if he wasn't such a jerk!” Be aware that sometimes this can sound like a positive thing: “You make me happy, You make me feel safe.”_ Somehow that sounded worse in English than it did in Japanese. Hypersensitive Americans.

 _Jealousy: wanting to know where you are and who you're with at all times._ Before the cell phone, it had been a pager. OK, then, fine. That one kind of fit.

 _Grew up in an abusive or violent home._ Nope. Tsukasa's parents certainly hadn't been abusive. Or there at all, really. It had all been up to his sister. Who had cracked him over the head and yelled at him regularly…

 _Tries to isolate you: gets angry when you contact friends or family…_ That hadn't been Tsukasa. His mother had not been happy at all to be associated with a family as lowly as the Makinos, and maybe they weren't part of their daily social circles any more, but that was just because it made everyone, Mom and Dad included, uncomfortable. Tsukishi still visited them at least a couple of times a year…

 _Impulsive...walking on eggshells…unpredictable rages…_ holes punched through drywall. A flying cafeteria chair… No, no, no! It wasn't like that. Tsukishi didn't want to look at the list. Ask Amy didn't know Tsukasa, didn't know the sad, lonely little boy he was inside. _Please take threats of physical harm seriously_ , Ask Amy begged her American audience. _Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline…_ His hands on her throat, the screaming voice going blurry as she'd fought for breath… but it had only been the one time. He hadn't meant it. He'd been drunk. He'd been so sorry a few minutes later, and he'd been under so much stress lately… But the next time her pacing took her by the beside table and the phone, she picked it up.

\---

“Ja?” Hanazawa Rui spoke three or four languages. He usually chose whichever one would allow him to get by on the fewest possible syllables right then.

“Rui, it's me.”

“Hey.”

“I… Listen, Rui, I- I need help. I need to get away.”

“OK.” There was a pause. “Where are you?”

She had no idea where Hanazawa was, either, she realized. She might have just woken him up in the middle of the night. But he hadn't complained… “I'm in New York. We're staying at the Mariott.”

A brief, soft laugh at the other end of the line. “Huh! I'm actually at the Curtis Institute right now. I could be there in...” he trailed off. “When you say, 'get away'...”

Tsukishi took a deep breath. “I'm leaving him. I- I'm scared.”

“Ah.” It was always hard to tell with Rui, whether his voice was flat because he didn't express emotions easily, or because he genuinely didn't care. _High-functioning Aspbergers, someone said. Well, maybe. I thought those people had trouble understanding other people, and he's always been so perceptive._

“OK,” he repeated after a long pause. “You'll get away. Pack your jewelry and clothes and stuff – whatever you think you can – and take a car to Barney's. I'll have someone meet you there in… do you have any cash with you?”

“Nnnoo...”

“Passport?”

“Yes.”

“Good. So, go to Barney's; I'll have someone from our New York office meet you there and get you away in a cab to another hotel. It won't be like the Mariott, though.”

Tsukishi laughed in bewilderment and relief. “I don't care about that!”

“Good. Watanabe Sachiko.”

“That's who's meeting me?”

“That'll be your name for the cab and the hotel and things. I'll explain later. I'll try and meet you around dinnertime – I have to drive up from Philadelphia.”

There was no way she was really doing this. This was all happening so fast… and too slow. She wanted it over. She wanted out of here before she found out what kind of day Tsukasa was having. “Thanks, Rui.”

“Sure.” The line went dead. Tsukishi pressed her fingers against her closed eyes, took two deep breaths, and started packing. Passport, jewelry, clothes, ph- she picked up the phone again and sent a text to Hanazawa. _Am leaving the phone behind. At Barney's in an hour._

Fifteen seconds later, the phone buzzed a reply. _Good. Delete this._

She did. She wiped the call history too, for good measure. Tsukasa could still get the records from the phone company, and probably would, but it would take him at least a day or two. Time, time… _This is so wrong…_ but she dialed the front desk and calmly requested a driver. She looked in despair at the notepad. _I should say something. I still love him. I know he still loves me, or thinks he does…_ She couldn't think of a thing to say. She pulled her nail scissors out of their holder and snipped out the newspaper column with the list and set it by the abandoned phone.

\---

Rui showed up at the Best Western with a bag containing two plastic forks, a wad of paper napkins, and two cardboard containers full of better Pad Thai than Tsukishi had had in years. They ate and Tsukishi talked, around in circles, blaming herself, blaming Tsukasa, worrying about what might happen to her family once the news broke, trying to understand just how this war had ended in retreat after all this time. “It happened so gradually… I never used to be afraid. Well, I was, but then I wasn't. I know he doesn't really...”

“Stop.” Rui put his hand flat on the table. Tsukishi stuffed a forkful of noodles in her mouth. Rui looked vaguely at a spot just behind her shoulder. “Sometimes,” he said, “My dad… Don't make excuses for him.” Tsukishi gulped noodles and nodded. Rui dug in his briefcase. “Here,” he said. He held out a phone – one of the cheap kind with the minutes loaded on already and no camera. For the first time in ten years, Tsukishi could make a phone call without wondering if her husband would find out about it. She looked at the menu – Rui had already plugged some numbers into the contacts list.

“Thanks.”

“And here,” Rui said, handing her a billfold and a flat envelope. The billfold was full of Euro notes. The envelope held plane tickets: departure time early tomorrow. “Remember Shizuka? Good. She'll help you. She'll meet you in Paris.”

Meaning, one more layer of international bureaucracy between her and him. Even with Doumyouji connections, more time. And Shizuka! Tsukishi had all but worshiped her once upon a time for her kindness and strength. She burst into tears and Rui patted her awkwardly.

\---

He stayed with her until nearly midnight, not saying much. When Tsukishi prodded him, he explained that “Watanabe Sachiko” was a false identity used by some of the shadier branches of the Hanazawa Corporation for the kinds of negotiations where real names were unwise. If one chose the right hotels, the right airlines, the machinery of camouflage was already in place. Even if Barney's shared its security videos early on, Tsukasa would not be able to trace his missing wife fast enough to do anything about it.

That was the only time that long night that it was Hanazawa Rui that talked. Mostly, he listened. He sat next to her on the bed and watched American television shows about safe things like making gardens. He poured her lethal-looking drinks from the horrible cheap contents of the hotel minibar. He was there. It was sometime after the second of the drinks that Tsukishi reached over and patted his hand. “I used to have the worst crush on you, back in high school, you know… even before Tsukasa started the whole Red Card war...”

He pulled his hand away. “Not now,” he said. “Find your feet first. Figure things out. I'll be around...” Tsukishi nodded, blushing from embarrassment and booze.

Rui's phone buzzed. He looked at it, looked at her, and put one finger to his lips. _It's him,_ she thought, _Oh, god_ , and nodded miserably.

“Ja?” Rui held the speaker away from his ear while it produced an angry, tinny waterfall of sound. Tsukishi bit her lips. Then her fingernails. “Slow down,” he said into the phone. “Where are you now?” Another waterfall. The only words clear enough for Tsukishi to catch were _incompetent shitheads._ Rui interrupted after another minute. “I'm in Philadelphia,” he lied. “It would take me a few hours but I could be there if you want.” The waterfall took on a sobbing note. “OK, see you then,” Rui told it and tapped the phone off. “He thinks you've been kidnapped.”

“Oh, god.” She started crying again. A confused mix of terror and guilt. Tsukasa really did love her; he'd never imagine she'd do something like this to him. What would he do when he figured it out? What if he found out she'd called Rui? Would he get into trouble?

“It will be all right,” Rui promised her. He rolled off the bed and padded into the tiny bathroom. There were plumbing sounds. When he came back, he twitched one of the pillows off the bed and stretched out on the floor. “Get some sleep,” he advised.


	2. Paris

Shizuka D'Armand, nee Toudou, was as kindly and competent as Tsukishi remembered from her teenage years, but she seemed more human somehow. There were lines around her eyes, and she made jokes, and she and her husband lived in a crowded little flat full of books and Moroccan folk art. Her husband had changed her. Or maybe it was just that twenty-seven and thirty were not so far apart as seventeen and twenty. Emile D'Armand proved to be earnest, energetic, and half a head shorter than Shizuka was. He was always bringing friends home to the flat for long, cheerful arguments about how to save the world and which philosophers to quote while doing so. Watching him and Shizuka together hurt sometimes. Sometimes, so did watching them with their friends: artists and idealists and activists, generous and kind. They welcomed Tsukishi warmly, invited her to envelope-stuffing parties and sit-down strikes and shifts at different charity operations. Sometimes she accepted. Sometimes she did nothing but sit on the tiny balcony of the flat and look out over the dirty street. Sometimes she closed herself up in the guest room and did homework.

There was a lot of homework. Shizuka the lawyer kept her at it, gently and steadily. Visa applications. Aid applications. Job applications. The divorce paperwork, hugely long and elaborate, considering that she had signed a prenup and wasn't even trying to claim everything she was entitled to in it. Everything handled through layers of go-betweens. Trying to set up her new, legal identity without ever once stepping into the tentacular reach of the Doumyouji corporation. French grammar. Her French wasn't nearly as good as her English. It was a double relief, the days the D'Armands' friends gathered somewhere else and the flat was quiet, and she and Shizuka could speak Japanese.

“Have you thought about what you'd like to do next?”

“I don't know,” Tsukishi sighed. “I don't want to go back to college – not even if I could afford it, which I can't.”

“You could,” Shizuka told her. “You'd have help.”

“I already owe Hanazawa too much.”

“The other two have let me know their funds are available as well. In large amounts; they just don't believe it's possible to live on less than a hundred thousand Euro a year. You could think of it as reparations, maybe?”

Tsukishi was grateful, she really was... but she was tired of having to be grateful. “I'll think about it,” she said.


	3. Tokyo

“I've got something for you, Smiley.” Lt. Arima Shoujou was one of the few people who knew her real name and history, but he usually called her by the same nickname the rest of the squad used. All the rest of the squad knew was that it was a very, very bad idea to treat Sergeant Watanabe like an OL. And you'd better be careful how you treated the actual OLs when she was around too. But it was a very, very good idea to bring in Watanabe if you had a tricky operation to pull off. She had the brains. She wasn't afraid of _anyone_. And it was rumored that she had... other connections. The details varied according to the rumormongers: she was the secret mistress of the scion of a super-wealthy family. She was a former operative in a nest of French anarchists. They got wilder from there. But everyone knew: Watanabe got things done. She'd been getting things done for the Organized Crime unit for three years now; she had a real knack for human trafficking cases.

Now, she looked up from her desk. “Sir?”

He dropped a piece of paper on top of the three-ring binder she'd had open on her desk. “Remember the Hawaii Perfume raid, last year?”

“Of course.” Sixteen girls in that one filthy apartment above the club. Another thirty, over the next few days, as the lower-level criminals spilled what they knew and the rings traveled outward. A lot of the girls had been from North Africa; Watanabe's French had been very useful.

“One of the girls wrote you a letter.” Lt. Arima tapped the paper he had dropped, and Tsukishi picked it up.

_Dear Sergeant Smiley-San,_ it said. _I wanted to tell you thank you for getting me out of that place and telling me I was still just as good as anybody and that I could still make a good life. This is a picture of me at my graduation pizza party; it was an online school so we hadn't met each other before. I've decided I want to help people like you do. I'm trying to get into college but right now I'm working at this youth center in my neighborhood where poor kids can go and hang out and be safe. The Hanazawa Foundation runs it; it's called the Weedlot because it's for people who are coming up through the cracks. Anyways, I just wanted to tell you I'm OK now and thank you, thank you thank you so much._

Tsukishi wiped her eyes. “Well,” she said, “That's a victory worth fighting for.”

“No shit,” said Lt. Arima. He looked up at the clock. “You going to knock off in time for Yukinon's party?” Arima's wife was maybe her best friend outside the force – a firecracker of a woman, comprised of equal parts hard-working ambition and wacky humor. Her parties were good parties. However... “Can't make it,” she told him. “I have tickets to a violin concert tonight.”

“Ohhhh?” Her commander waggled his eyebrows. “Hotel reservations afterward?”

“Shush, sir.” At least none of the rookies were around to see her blush.

“Give him my best. Have a good time, Watanabe. You've earned it.” She had, Tsukishi thought. She really had.

“And meanwhile I'll finish my trial prep. See you around, sir.” She bent back over her paperwork, entirely contented.

**Author's Note:**

> The semester that my college anime club chose _Hana Yori Dango_ as one of the shows we'd watch, I was interning at a women's shelter. Doumyouji/Makino as the canon couple made me very, very angry.
> 
> Yes, that's Arima from _Kare Kano_ there at the end. Seemed to fit, y'know?


End file.
